Yes, brother, curse with me that baleful hour, When first ambition struck at regal power; And thus polluting honour in its source, 395 Gave wealth to sway the mind with double force. Have we not seen, round Britain’s peopled shore, Her useful sons exchang’d for useless ore? Seen all her triumphs but destruction haste, Like flaring tapers bright’ning as they waste; 400 Seen opulence, her grandeur to maintain, Lead stern depopulation in her train, And over fields where scatter’d hamlets rose, In barren solitary pomp repose? Have we not seen, at pleasure’s lordly call, 405 The smiling long-frequented village fall? Beheld the duteous son, the sire decay’d, The modest matron, and the blushing maid, Forc’d from their homes, a melancholy train, To traverse climes beyond the western main; 410 Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thund’ring sound? E’en now, perhaps as there some pilgrim strays Through tangled forests, and through dangerous ways; Where beasts with man divided empire claim, 415 And the brown Indian marks with murd’rous aim; There, while above the giddy tempest flies, And all around distressful yells arise, The pensive exile, bending with his woe, To stop too fearful, and too faint to go, 420 Casts a long look where England’s glories shine, And bids his bosom sympathise with mine. Vain, very vain, my weary search to find That bliss which only centres in the mind: Why have I stray’d from pleasure and repose, 425 To seek a good each government bestows? In every government, though terrors reign, Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain, How small, of all that human hearts endure, That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. 430 Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, Our own felicity we make or find: With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Glides the smooth current of domestic joy. The lifted axe, the agonising wheel, 435 Luke’s iron crown, and Damiens’ bed of steel, To men remote from power but rarely known, Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own. [Illustration: Vignette to ‘The Deserted Village’] VIGNETTE TO ‘THE DESERTED VILLAGE’ (Isaac Taylor) THE DESERTED VILLAGE DEDICATION TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS